Six Sigma: applied research for improved public relations.

Maybe it's just human nature to focus on the most recent result rather than on patterns and trends, but it's certainly been the traditional approach to measuring public relations performance and ROI.

What's more, most public relations agencies and departments tie results only to clips rather than to meaningful business outcomes. Essentially, these two elements all but ensure that public relations' role will never be first-tier.

New methodologies and technology are being integrated today to foster the "science" of public relations and to ensure optimized public relations performance. One of the most important emerging forms of this integration is Six Sigma, a quality and performance philosophy that originated at Motorola and that is now under way at many of the world's leading companies.

WHAT IS SIX SIGMA?

Six Sigma is a disciplined, data-driven approach and method for eliminating defects (or deviation). The term itself is derived from statistics, whereby one tracks "defects per million opportunities." In this case, a "defect" is described as anything outside of customer expectations. By definition, Six Sigma is less than 3.4 defects per million, or a success rate of 99.9997 percent. Given that most companies perform at a two-to-three sigma level (roughly 70 to 93 percent), a four sigma level or 99.38 percent success rate, sounds pretty good--it would mean a solid "A" in school. But it also means that 6,210 of every million airline flights would end in disaster.

Clearly the impact for achieving high quality is much more critical in some fields (air travel) than in others (pizza delivery), out the stakes are enormous if one extends the analysis to the cost of imperfection, as even a pizza company can recover tens of millions of dollars through on-time delivery, pizzas not dropped or burned, and correct orders. Clearly a lot of money is being left on the table in the course of "doing business." Six Sigma companies such as GE (US$2 billion annually), Texas Instruments (US$600 million), Johnson & Johnson (US$500 million) and Honeywell (US$1.2 billion) attribute enormous annual savings to Six Sigma.

Essentially, the purpose of Six Sigma is to gain breakthrough knowledge on how to improve processes to do things better, faster and at lower cost. It can be used to improve every facet of business, from production to human resources, to technical support and, yes, even to corporate communication. Unlike other quality-improvement efforts, some of which may have been the latest fad at your organization, Six Sigma is designed to provide tangible business results, which is to say, cost savings that are directly traceable to the bottom line.

The Six Sigma process begins by first gaining an important understanding of one's internal and external customers (in PR, internal customers are those people who fund PR; an external customer might be a journalist, an analyst, an employee or an actual customer). Second, but no less important, one must understand the needs of customers so that customer expectations can be met. Commonly used tools in the process are surveys, focus groups and customer panels, and because many of PR's internal clients are looking for media coverage, content analysis of news coverage may be critical in satisfying their needs.

A CASE STUDY: GE APPLIANCES

The Problem: In the late 1980s, Work-Out was the start of GE's quality management journey. Through Work-Out, GE created a culture open to ideas from everyone and everywhere, decimating the bureaucracy and making boundary-less behavior a reflexive, natural part of the GE culture. This created the learning environment that led to Six Sigma. Today, Six Sigma, in turn, has embedded quality thinking--process thinking--across every level and in every operation of the company, including public relations.

Although Six Sigma's customer focused, data-driven philosophy has been applied throughout GE, it had not been consistently applied to communication functions within the organization. GE Appliances' corporate communication team was convinced it could use the Six Sigma quality process to better "control" PR execution and ensure that media coverage always met or exceeded the team's targeted effectiveness/productivity measurements.

The Solution: GEA and its research partner, Delahaye, began to explore how the measurement data Delahaye compiled for the company monthly and quarterly--particularly Delahaye's Weighted Impact & Net Effect method (a proprietary formula for distilling PR effectiveness into a single score for the purposes of evaluating and planning PR programs)--could help accomplish this goal.

Beginning in 2000, GE and Delahaye worked to test, refine and verify Delahaye's method and to demonstrate that it could provide the consistently reliable data required for the Six Sigma process. Later that year, GEA began the initial series of Six Sigma analysis projects that continued into mid-2001. The business objective was to develop a real time strategy for consistently improving and controlling overall PR productivity (costs), ROI, and effectiveness in reaching and influencing GEA's target consumer, customer and investor segments.

Method: At its core, Six Sigma revolves around a few main concepts:

* Critical to Quality: Attributes most important to the customer

* Defect: Failing to deliver what the customer wants

* Process Capability: What your process can deliver

* Variation: What the customer sees and feels

* Stable Operations: Consistent, predictable processes to improve what the customer sees and feels.

The objectives of GEA's initial Six Sigma analyses were to identify and then control the independent variables influencing their Weighted Impact Scores (quality and quantity of news coverage) and production of positive media impressions. By understanding which factors are controllable by PR, they would be able to focus their efforts on driving these factors to ensure optimum media performance and PR productivity.

The methods and quality processes used to complete these Six Sigma projects included "Design for Six Sigma," a systematic method using tools, training and measurements to facilitate the design of products and processes that meet customer expectations and can be produced at Six Sigma quality levels.

In other words, the Six Sigma process guides communicators through the following steps:

* Define

* Measure

* Analyze

* Improve

* Control.

Weighted Impact & Net Effect is Delahaye's research-based formula for gauging the effectiveness of a company's media coverage. Story attributes that can influence a media placement's level of audience exposure, the reader's level of awareness and recall, and the reader's takeaway impression are weighted on the basis of the attribute's level of contribution to the placement's overall impact. A computer-generated score between +100 percent and-100 percent is assigned to each placement. The editorial tone of the placement determines whether the score is a positive or negative number. The audited circulation figures or audience reach of the placement is then multiplied by its Weighted Impact Score to determine its weighted reach, or Net Effect.

Conclusions: GEA's corporate communication team has developed a PR Effectiveness Control Plan based on the two Six Sigma projects completed to date. It can be used throughout their PR efforts, including media relations strategy (i.e., media relationship management, media mix targeting), product exposure strategy (i.e., product exposure guidelines) and overall resource allocation. These efforts will also ensure a closer alignment of PR objectives with the strategies and business goals of the organization. Research findings verify that the business impact is significant, specifically:

* a substantial improvement in overall PR productivity (costs)

* a 16-percent decrease in "cost per positive media impression" produced

* an 8-basis-point increase in the number of positive media impressions produced

* a 20-basis-point decrease in the number of negative media impressions produced.

The Six Sigma quality process requires ongoing analysis to ensure continued process improvement and productivity growth. GEA is now preparing to begin its next series of Six Sigma projects that will incorporate an even broader set of data from other GEA communication operations. The GE Appliances corporate communication team is the first within GE to attain Six Sigma certification.

GETTING STARTED

Typically, public relations and corporate communication departments do not take the lead in Six Sigma programs. So although you may have metric systems to contribute, you may have to go in search of your organization's Six Sigma leaders, known as "Black Belts."

As Six Sigma metrics lend themselves to projects, there are a number of projects you can undertake (see "Six sigma project ideas for PR."). As you look to identify your own projects, keep in mind that they must be meaningful, measurable and reasonable.

Although research and public relations are new partners, the application of research and PR continues to grow as companies demand to know how their money is spent and how it can be spent more wisely. Six Sigma has met with enormous success; it is unlikely to be just the latest business fad.

So the next time someone asks "what's new in PR?" you may be able to answer in ways that you never thought possible with an impact much greater than ever before.

SIX SIGMA PROJECT IDEAS FOR PR

* Reduce time for press release approval.

* Improve media targeting (identify media that have proven reach among your target audience).

* Assess journalists' preferences and satisfaction with current PR initiatives.

* Assess "internal client" preferences and satisfaction with current PR initiatives.

* Improve the ratio of releases sent versus releases used.

* Improve the ratio of placements featuring critical messages.

* Improve the ratio of placements featuring a company spokesperson.

* Improve the ratio of stories featuring visuals or graphics.

* Improve the ratio of stories that are either exclusives or feature-length.

* Improve the ROI of events and event sponsorships.

* For agencies, improve percentage of billable hours.

Mark Weiner is CEO of Delahaye Medialink Worldwide. He can he reached at [e-mail], or visit www.delahaye.com.